Listen to this PodcastMore 60-Second Health
Telling people to change unhealthy behaviors doesn’t work. Otherwise, we would all already be slim, fit, nonsmokers.
Whether it's habit, the temptation of an ad or just the easiest option, we often rely on automatic behaviors to get us through the day. And even though we know taking the elevator, grabbing a beer or drowning a salad in ranch dressing are not the healthiest choices, we keep making them. Unless those bad choices become too inconvenient.
Making bad choices harder is actually the best way to help people get healthier, argues a new essay in the journal Science. [Theresa M. Marteau, Gareth J. Hollands and Paul C. Fletcher, Changing Human Behavior to Prevent Disease: The Importance of Targeting Automatic Processes]
Simply programming elevator doors to close really slowly actually motivates more people to climb stairs. Limiting the places that sell tobacco cuts overall consumption. And then there's the trusty old salad bar trick: put healthier options closer than other choices and more people pick them.
Little changes like these reach everyone—not just the people targeted with a health message. And they get us healthier just by letting us stay on autopilot.
—Katherine Harmon
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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4 Comments
Add Commentyes but this ignores the commercial reality that companies makes profits from high fat/salt/sugar products, and tend not to make so much money from lettuce leaves
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisas long as healthy choices conflict with commercial profits we will always be behind this eight ball ...
My dad always said we were creatures of habit. Making an effort to develop healthy habits is an effort at first, but once it's a habit, it does not require the same degree of effort to continue it day in and day out. That's called using your nature to your advantage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, lettuce and greens are low cost, high profit items for restaurants, but pasta is too. It's the animal proteins that run up your food costs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this*And even though we know taking the elevator … are not the healthiest choices, we keep making them.*
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisElevators are a necessity for all people especially for whom live or work in the more high floors or that need exit and return to the building frequently.
It is absurd create tricks that can signify hurdles to many only to satisfy the alleged necessities of the few, like in this case of the intention of create a mechanism that could slow the open and shut of the doors of the elevators. At least was it what the podcast stated, saying: *Simply programming elevator doors to close really slowly actually motivates more people to climb stairs.*
Lazy and gluttonous persons that adopt new attitudes that could bring them healthier conditions of life!
It is an authoritarian thinking try to treat every person in the same way. Persons have their individualities and different necessities; this has to be respected!
Information, information, information, this is what is very necessary in democratic societies.